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Kindle Unlimited - how many downloads?
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If this is a dumb question, Adam, then we're in the same idiot boat - I'm wondering the same thing.
Well. I can't find anything except pages read. Maybe there is somewhere....
The best you can do is come up with an estimate of total books read. That number would be as useful to you as an actual number, I would think.
Amazon originally paid for and recorded KU "downloads,"(10% read) but they changed the payment to "pages read."There is a lot they could tell us that they don't eg. page hits etc. They no longer report downloads. Perhaps we can all moan at them.
This is a great question-and it took me a bit to figure it out. On your Bookshelf page, click the "Promote & Advertise" button. On the following page there will be a sentence that tells you how long, in KENP, you book is: "Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) v2.0: XXX"
Once you know the length of your book(s), you should (hopefully), be able to figure out how many downloads you're getting.
Hope this helps!
David wrote: "This is a great question-and it took me a bit to figure it out. On your Bookshelf page, click the "Promote & Advertise" button. On the following page there will be a sentence that tells you how lon..."I think what the OP is asking, though, is whether there is a way to tell how many people have clicked the button to download the book but not started to read it yet. I have often wondered the same thing.
You could have one person reading 1000 pages, or 20 people reading 50 pages each, and it still works out to be 1000 pages on the KENP graph. Personally, I'd love to know whether I have one voracious reader or 20 who read a few pages and then put the book down.
Thanks David. My NPC is 465 (which is at odds with the book length of 284 pages as advertised on amazon). I guess this is beneficial as the extra pages via KU means that we get more return for each download?Attempting to correlate figures will at best be more miss than hit IMO though. It's a shame amazon don't supply us with separate stats.
On your KDP dashboard, click the "Contact Us" link and send them feedback. Many of us have been requesting this feature. Maybe some day, they'll listen.
Adam - The KENP is an attempt to make an "average" standard page over all types of readers & settings, which will cause significant variations in page lengths. The KENP is really for reimbursement purposes only.Missy - Gotcha! That would be a good feature, indeed. One way to kinda watch that is to watch your book's rankings (although this is spitballing at best). Your book will often move up in rankings when a book has been checked out, even before any KENP show up in your stats.
So, how do you tell how many books you've sold - Kindle, Paperback, or Hardcover? I have so many people telling me they've read my book, and they've done a book review, yet it shows no books sold on my Amazon Sales Ranking, and I haven't received a royalty check from Xlibris since March.
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Hi, Riley! The problem is, I don't think Xlibris is reporting them accurately. Do you know a way I can verify how many Kindle sales I've had on Amazon?
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The problem is, I don't think Xlibris is reporting them accurately. Do you know a way I can verify how many Kindle sales I've had on Amazon?"
Do you have a KDP page for your book? That will show you EVERYTHING up to a year ago. Just go to reports, where you see your pages read. Otherwise, you won't know how many people use your books on KDP, only pages read. By the way, are you published through xlibris AND in KDP? How does that work?
KDP only stipulates that your digital title has to be exclusive to Amazon. Paperback and audio versions can be on whatever platform you choose.
Sorry, Adam, I really don't mean to hijack your inquiry. My apologies!
Riley & Tim,I have little to no experience with sales reports or promos on Amazon/Goodreads because of Xlibris. I can't find out where to get accurate sales stats from Amazon, and Xlibris insists I have no sales reported, yet I have an average of 2-3 people tell me each day that they've read and enjoyed my novel. Where do they get it? Amazon! So why is Xlibris saying I haven't sold any books?
I've also tried to set up book promos with Amazon & Goodreads, but they refer me back to Xlibris. The problem is they play dumb & tell me that it's Amazon/Goodreads' responsibility to set it up. I'm always stuck in limbo bouncing back & forth between the two & getting nothing accomplished so now I've just given up. I'm ready to call it quits & just start my novel over again with a new self-publisher. Any suggestions?
Oh. and I forgot to mention that back in April, I purchased 10 of my own books on Amazon as gifts just to see what would happen ... You guessed it - Xlibris reported no sales all summer long and to this very date.
So what is good about Xlibris?
I think you might be better off publishing your books yourself, J.B. That way you can have control of your dashboard and promotions. If Xlibris says that Amazon and Goodreads set up promotions...that sounds like baloney to me.I can make a *rough guess* based on your ranks, and my guess is that you are selling one or two per week. My brain works a bit like a calculator and I seem to catch on pretty quick to algorithms, but I'm also new at this (first published in April), so you don't have to take my word for it :D. Also that is just for Amazon. I really don't know anything about the other platforms yet. Here are some other guesstimates which have been floating around the internet among indie publishers, and I find it somewhat accurate. Just keep in mind that ranks are accumulative too (if you sell 50 books one day and 0 the next, your rank is not necessarily going to take a dive that second day...but tend to taper off over the week). Each book read on KU contributes to ranks also:
Marie, that is a really helpful chart. I only wish I was selling 4,000 a day. Right now, 20 books a month is a big month. One day I'll get it right.
I wonder if Xlibris isn't reporting your Amazon sales because you haven't reached the threshold for payment yet? It's possible... But if they have access to your dashboard and you can't access the dash for the book, there's no way for you to know when you've hit that threshold. Does anyone know how to gain access to the KDP dashboard if someone else published your book for you? Is it even possible?
Great chart, Marie - very helpfu! Thanks for sharing!!
Thank you for the super helpful chart, Marie! :D This is great. Man, I wish I sold 4,000+ copies a day someday...those are pretty daunting numbers at the top.
Related question, so when do my kindle unlimited $$ show up in the reporting? I saw say $100 on December 5th or so for the previous month? Now its Jan 16th and still haven't seen any $$ reflected from Kindle Unlimited. When should I see this?
Kindle unlimited pays exactly the same as Kindle book sales. They are calculated by month and paid sixty days later. So your sales from December would be on the report that came out on Saturday, and you will be paid for these at the end of February.
I think November royalties come at the end of February. What country are you in and do you get EFT deposits from KDP? Mine come in on the 29th of each month.Edit: oops, was I off by a month? It's confusing *sigh*
I think i found it in the previous month excel file, ill wait for 29 th thanks. In USA
Sorry if this appears a dumb question & I am probably missing something obvious but if I know the level of interest shown by KU subscribers I feel I can better target my ads.